


Janus

by Sangerin



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/F, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Motherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-06
Updated: 2006-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 02:18:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangerin/pseuds/Sangerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Introspection caught up with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Janus

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Through "Jefferson Lives"

Zoey slept all the way to Manchester. There was a bed prepared for her on the airplane, with a chair next to it for Abbey. She’d barely allowed Zoey out of her sight in weeks. For take off and landing, she had to sit on the other side of the room, strapped into a fixed chair. But the moment Lieutenant-Colonel Gantry said she could, she was out of that chair and at Zoey’s side. She didn’t look out the windows as the lights of Washington DC faded in the distance.

The farm at Manchester was the best protected private property in the United States. CJ had a tendency to joke that a full-scale war could be organised from the front parlour, which was one of the things Abbey resented. Along with the secret service crawling over the place endlessly, the searchlights focused on the woods, and the fact that she now found these things comforting rather than aggravating.

She woke Zoey when the car stopped, just enough that Zoey could make it out of the car on her own two feet. The steward would have helped, and the agents would have helped, but Abbey didn’t want them. Didn’t want them around her and her daughter, not now. She got Zoey upstairs, and undressed the sleepy young woman as though she was three years old again. She tucked Zoey in and kissed her on the forehead. Then she pulled up an armchair from the corner of Zoey’s room and sat down.

She was woken the next morning by a steward with cups of coffee for both her and Zoey. When Zoey saw her mother still sitting beside her bed, she stuck out her tongue. ‘How long are you going to do this, Mom? A month? A year? Are you going to come to Med school with me?’

The thought had entered Abbey’s head.

Elizabeth arrived as they were finishing breakfast. She’d taken the kids to school and then set out across the state to see her mother and sister. Elizabeth has called every night that she hasn’t been with Abbey, and Ellie called and emailed a lot more than she had before.

Elizabeth shooed Abbey out of the kitchen, flapping her hands at Abbey as though she were a stray chicken. Abbey grinned at her daughters and took a mug of strong coffee with her out onto the wide veranda. She settled into a chair and looked out over the fields.

They called it the Farm, but of course it wasn’t. It had been years since the land had produced much of anything. They kept horses, and had a couple fields set aside for hay as a result. But they didn’t work the farm themselves, not even the hayfields. They hired people, and hired a manager to oversee the workers, and if Jed had ever been expected to get out in those fields and put his hand to the plow to feed his family they would have starved to death. And Abbey had to admit that even if she and the girls had tried their hands instead, the result wouldn’t have been much different. They loved this farm, every one of them – loved the woods and the hills and valleys; loved the house and the old stables and the new barn where the horses lived; loved the clear air and the sky that showed its stars at night, or would if it weren’t for the Secret Service and the lighting they insisted upon. They all loved the farm, but it was a construct.

She didn’t like introspection. She shied away from it at every opportunity, but now, sitting in a late summer breeze with two of her three daughters inside doing the dishes and with nothing but a cup of coffee to hold her attention, introspection caught up with her. She so rarely had time like this. Life in DC was hectic, life as a surgeon-mother-politician’s wife had been frantic. Instead, now, she had time to sit and breathe in the scent of her coffee, instead of gulping it down on the way to her next surgical case.

She had been all for gulping when she’d first met Jed. Hadn’t wanted to fall for him, hadn’t wanted him to come weaselling his way into her perfectly ordered life. Jackass. With his quotes and his idealism and his damn fine looks. And his mind. He was brilliant – and he knew it – but there was no way she could tell him to go away, because he was just there. In her head, even when she hadn’t seen him for days. Just the way her mother had said it would happen, and just the way she’d never wanted.

There were days she barely recognised him anymore. When what he was retreated so far into the politician that she wasn’t sure he’d emerge intact. Those were the days when she stayed away from Leo, from CJ, from Josh and Toby; from all the people she blamed for the transformation, even though she knew some of it came from Jed himself. But she wondered whether Jed would even have been here if it hadn’t been for Leo McGarry, and most of the time she was sure he wouldn’t be. Governor of New Hampshire, yes. It was practically a feudal right – Leo’s words, damnit. But even though life wasn’t easy then, either, it had been easier, and she’d never – never – been worried that Zoey might be abducted by terrorists instead of just garden-variety lunatics.

She detested this life with almost every fibre of her being. Detested the secrets more than anything else – the fact that Leo and the Joint Chiefs and Nancy knew things about her husband and the decisions he’d made that she didn’t know. Knew that he’d killed – ordered – in cold blood. She set the coffee cup down so hard she worried it might break. She stood up and moved to the porch railing, wrapped her hands around it as though it was that piece of white painted wood that would keep her anchored to something. Perhaps to her sanity or to reality. Perhaps to her family. Perhaps to her marriage.

She didn’t think she knew him any more. There were things in his head that she’d never thought could exist in that mind that had been so clear and certain and focused. Since the news broke – and like so many other things, she heard about it from the nation’s newscasters or from CJ’s lips, rather than from her own husband – she’d moved to a guest bedroom in the Residence. There had been one moment, in the field as they’d hurried across to the ambulance, when he’d reached out his hand and she’d taken it, and for a moment they were just parents. Terrified, and yet grateful that their daughter, their baby, was sitting in that ambulance, safe, thanks be to God. Then they’d gone back to DC and he’d signed that letter and taken back the power of the White House. There was a part of her that understood why. But there were problems piled on broken promises piled on old aggravations, and after that one swift handclasp she’d barely allowed him to touch her again.

She looked down at her hands, the knuckles white from their grip on the railing. She breathed and loosened her hands, and in a couple of steps was back in the chair, with her head in her hands. Suddenly it was too much effort to hold up her head, and she sat, slumped, until she heard a painfully polite agent ask, from below the porch steps, whether anything was wrong.

‘No, no,’ she replied, pulling herself back up, willing herself to not make a scene. The agent left and it seemed as though she was alone, although she knew there would be agents somewhere in the vicinity.

‘Mom?’ Zoey stood at the door.

‘I’m fine, sweetie.’

Zoey pushed the door open, and walked across to Abbey, squeezing herself into the chair next to her mother.

‘Oof,’ said Abbey, but she grinned.

‘Do you ever feel divided in two?’ Zoey asked.

She couldn’t bear Jed’s touch but missed him desperately. She detested him beyond all reason, but couldn’t imagine him not being an aggravating, infuriating part of her life. She knew the illness was coming back, and it terrified her almost as much as the thought of losing Zoey had paralyzed her.

‘Yes.’

‘I miss Dad,’ said Zoey, softly.

‘I know,’ said Abbey. ‘I know none of this is easy. And part of me misses him, too.’ She leaned over and kissed her youngest, fragile, strong, brilliant, beautiful daughter on her forehead. ‘Just don’t tell your father I said so.’

Zoey giggled, and Abbey felt her heart lift, just a little.

**Author's Note:**

> [Janus](http://www.pantheon.org/articles/j/janus.html) is the Roman god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings, and hence represented with a double-faced head, each looking in opposite directions. He was worshipped at the beginning of the harvest time, planting, marriage, birth, and other types of beginnings, especially the beginnings of important events in a person's life. Janus also represents the transition between primitive life and civilization, between the countryside and the city, peace and war, and the growing-up of young people.


End file.
